People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it’s this world or nothing. That’s a very powerful perception.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

I’m not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, ‚All right! Get out of the room.‘

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

I have to be seen to be believed.

I’m not a parenting expert. In fact, I’m not sure that I even believe in the idea of ‚parenting experts.‘ I’m an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I’m an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

Actually, I didn’t start sweating until I had children.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

We’re all bombarded with so many dietary messages that it’s hard to find time to sort through all this information, but we do have time to take a look at our kids‘ plates.

Everybody has their thing they like or don’t like to see. It’s all in your head. That’s why people take their own pictures, because it’s difficult for someone else to capture what you seek.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

It’s not bragging if you can back it up.

But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I’m upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‚fat cat‘ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‚public-spirited philanthropist‘.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Feeling like you’re respected among the people who do the same thing you do is incredible and necessary.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the U.S. government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That’s all to the good.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

What used to keep me up at night was the fact that I didn’t know how I was going to pay the rent. Now that I can pay the rent, I’m worrying about people I care about, you know, the people I love. The little aches and pains of my children that I, my family. That’s always first.

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

I feel like I’m the kind of guy that would have kids before getting married. The first thing would be kids.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.